Bang!

 

Although my computer desktop is admirably uncluttered, this is not the case in respect of the surface on which my laptop resides. There are toys I have kept since my childhood but also souvenirs of my years in the Sandlands like the little flask of perfumed oil from Ajmal above on the right, sitting on its little base.

Two years ago I re-purposed the base which had come with a previous bottle of delightfully aromatic Black Pearl oil and set thereupon that egg stamped with the word HOPE.

Said egg was delivered on the 9th of July 2011. It's arrival meant that I was participating in a situationist art project, exploring the fragility of hope. It seems that the project was abandoned by the initiating artist, a talented young woman private life... I think... became unfortunately complicated.

However... there is a fascinating postscriptum to this eggs-traordinary story. Yesterday, eggs-actly two years to the day since mine arrived the egg exploded with a loud bang. This happened while I was still waking up, and my first thought was that the power-strip feeding all my devices had blown uts fuse and I was very relieved to discover that this was not the case. I remained puzzled as to the source of this sudden detonation for a good while. Later in the morning I discovered a fragment of eggshell among the clutter on my desk.

Two years to the very day, an explosive disintegration... HOPE shattered! It was hardly the artist's intention, but it was nevertheless a percussive statement which certainly gave me food for thought. 

Which is surely what art is meant to do, is it not?